‘Money Ball’



‘Money Ball’ by Michael Lewis

Introduction

This book by Michael Lewis delves into the reasons behind the mysterious success of Oakland Athletics, one of the poorest teams in US baseball league. The book was written in a bid to answer the question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games? In a game where players are bought at unbelievable prices, where winning / losing is a matter of who’s got the bigger financial muscle, Oakland A’s go on to make a baseball history with rejected players and rookie players.

Moneyball is a book in which Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A’s and main character of this book, works with one of the lowest budgets in all of baseball to win a World Series. In order to do that, he needs to find the best, cheapest, most efficient way to win.

So, while the New York Yankees went after the big name players, who has the five ‘Tools’ (talent) i.e. the abilities to run, throw, field, hit and hit with power and even good muscular looks. Billy Beane, sought out undervalued players like Jeremy Brown, a catcher with an arm that wouldn’t quit and an astonishing two-year record of 390 at bats, 98 walks, 38 strikeouts, and 21 home runs…who also happened to weigh in at 210 pounds. Because other teams weren’t able to see past these physical or performance flaws, the A’s were able to scoop the players up for a fraction of their true worth, enabling Beane to craft a well-honed team while staying within his meager budget.

 

Overview

Billy Beane started out as a major league prospect being scouted by the New York Mets. He is drafted by the Mets, and he decides to play pro ball, just for the money. After his professional career goes awry, he is hired by the Oakland A’s to scout and eventually becomes the General Manager. After a while, Billy runs into a problem: he has one of the lowest budgets in the baseball world to work with. To help him, he hires Harvard graduate Paul DePodesta and changes the philosophy of the game. While getting ready for the 2002 season, Billy had three things; the draft, changing the way the team is run, and an extremely low budget to worry about while Paul had his statistics; a new and better way of understanding amateur players.

The books tends to point towards efficiency. The New York Yankees had a payroll of over a hundred million dollars. The Oakland A’s had less but still enough to do well. The A’s could drastically drop their payroll from over a hundred million that the Yankees were spending, to only 40-50 million. In this way, the team with the lower payroll will ultimately do better if they maintain the level of efficiency while increasing the payroll to an equal amount. It is because the Yankees are perhaps the richest team in baseball, that they do so well every year. Assuming they only had a budget of half of what they spend, they would only make the playoffs once every five to ten years. On the other hand, the more efficient teams would pound the Yankees every time.

One thing I really liked about this book is that it gives a lot of good information on how to make the most efficient baseball team. The book was able to find how Billy Beane and his assistant Paul DePodesta are able to single out the most important statistics and create a formidable team.

Conclusion

Michael Lewis’ Moneyball is truly a baseball masterpiece. What you do if you had less than half the money of other teams to win a Championship? This is the problem Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta have to face. Do you try to out-smart the other teams? Do you buy a couple of really good players and hope for the best? Do you just give up? The answer to all these questions and more are in the pages of Moneyball.

 

Thank you!